How many MLB players have hit for the cycle?
Elly De La Cruz has become the youngest player since 1972 to hit for the cycle. We look at how rare this feat is and who has accomplished it.
In only his fifteenth major league game, Cincinnati’s Elly De La Cruz has entered an exclusive club. Hitting for the cycle in Friday’s 11-10 win over the Atlanta Braves enters his name into the record books at several different levels.
Only 343 people out of the 20,405 total major leaguers throughout the long history of professional baseball have hit for a cycle. The first was in 1882 when the Boston Red Caps’ (now the Atlanta Braves) Curry Foley hit for the cycle against the now-defunct Cleveland Blues. And now De La Cruz.
At only 21 years, 163 days old, De La Cruz is the youngest player to hit for the cycle since 1972 when Houston’s César Cedeño accomplished the feat. De La Cruz is the first Red to hit for the cycle since Eric Davis in 1989. Interestingly, De La Cruz wears the same No. 44 jersey that Davis did.
Pirates hold franchise cycle record
Only 14 players in MLB history have ever hit a natural cycle, most recently Gary Matthews Jr for the Texas Rangers in 2006.
In terms of franchises, the Pittsburgh Pirates hold the record for the most cycles hit with 24, while the Miami Marlins are the only current MBL team never to have hit for the cycle.
On two occasions in the MLB a father-son cycle has been achieved, first in 2004 when Daryle Ward matched his father Gary Ward’s cycle 24 years earlier, and again in 2019 when Cavan Baggio hit for the cycle, following in his father Craig’s 2002 footsteps.
Since the disruption of the pandemic in 2020, here is a list of the players who have hit for the cycle.
PLAYER | DATE |
---|---|
Trea Turner | June 30, 2021 |
Jake Cronenworth | July 16, 2021 |
Freddie Freeman | August 18, 2021 |
Eddie Rosario | September 19, 2021 |
Christian Yelich | May 11, 2022 |
Eduardo Escobar | June 6, 2022 |
Jared Walsh | June 11, 2022 |
Austin Hays | June 22, 2022 |
Nolan Arenado | July 1, 2022 |
Luis Arráez | April 11, 2023 |
Cedric Mullins | May 12, 2023 |
J. T. Realmuto | June 12, 2023 |
Elly De La Cruz | June 23, 2023 |